"25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009. McKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and ""Me and Orson Welles"" was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review. In New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in ""Caesar"", the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard infers that he is having"
"Citizen Kane Citizen Kane is a 1941 American mystery drama film by Orson Welles, its producer, co-screenwriter, director and star. The picture was Welles's first feature film. Nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, it won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles. Considered by many critics, filmmakers, and fans to be the greatest film ever made, ""Citizen Kane"" was voted as such in five consecutive British Film Institute ""Sight & Sound"" polls of critics, and it topped the American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list in 1998, as well as"
"Screenplay for Citizen Kane The authorship of the screenplay for ""Citizen Kane"", the 1941 American motion picture that marked the feature film debut of Orson Welles, has been one of the film's long-standing controversies. With a story spanning 60 years, the quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a fictional character based in part upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick. A rich incorporation of the experiences and knowledge of its authors, the film earned an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) for"
"solid, durable story structure on which to build,"" Carringer wrote. Welles then ""adapted it with the same freedom and disregard for authority with which he adapt[ed] a Shakespeare play or a thriller by Nicholas Blake."" The screenplay for ""Citizen Kane"" received the Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay), shared by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles. Screenplay for Citizen Kane The authorship of the screenplay for ""Citizen Kane"", the 1941 American motion picture that marked the feature film debut of Orson Welles, has been one of the film's long-standing controversies. With a story spanning 60 years, the quasi-biographical film"
"Sources for Citizen Kane The sources for ""Citizen Kane"", the 1941 American motion picture that marked the feature film debut of Orson Welles, have been the subject of speculation and controversy since the project's inception. With a story spanning 60 years, the quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a fictional character based in part upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick. A rich incorporation of the experiences and knowledge of its authors, the film earned an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay)"
"reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to notoriety. His first film was ""Citizen Kane"" (1941), which he co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in as Charles Foster Kane. Welles was an outsider to the studio system and directed only 13 full-length films in his career. He struggled for creative control on his projects early on with the major film studios and later in life with a variety of independent financiers, and his films were either heavily edited or remained unreleased. His distinctive directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, uses of lighting such as chiaroscuro,"
"Orson Welles George Orson Welles (; May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and film. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three: in theatre, most notably ""Caesar"" (1937), a Broadway adaptation of William Shakespeare's ""Julius Caesar""; in radio, the legendary 1938 broadcast ""The War of the Worlds""; and in film, ""Citizen Kane"" (1941), consistently ranked as one of the greatest films ever made. In his 20s, Welles directed a number of high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project, including an adaptation of ""Macbeth"""
"flew to Paris to discuss the project personally with the Russian author. Orson Welles George Orson Welles (; May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and film. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three: in theatre, most notably ""Caesar"" (1937), a Broadway adaptation of William Shakespeare's ""Julius Caesar""; in radio, the legendary 1938 broadcast ""The War of the Worlds""; and in film, ""Citizen Kane"" (1941), consistently ranked as one of the greatest films ever made. In his 20s, Welles directed a number of high-profile"
"Remarkably, critic Arthur Knight reported in 1969 that the sequence was excised from most prints presented on American television. Sources for Citizen Kane The sources for ""Citizen Kane"", the 1941 American motion picture that marked the feature film debut of Orson Welles, have been the subject of speculation and controversy since the project's inception. With a story spanning 60 years, the quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a fictional character based in part upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick. A rich incorporation"
"Charles Foster Kane Charles Foster Kane is a fictional character and the subject of Orson Welles' 1941 film ""Citizen Kane"". The character is widely believed to be based on publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Welles played Kane (receiving an Oscar nomination), with Buddy Swan playing Kane as a child. Welles also produced, co-wrote and directed the film. The general consensus is that William Randolph Hearst is the primary inspiration behind Charles Foster Kane. In the film, Kane is given the line ""You provide the prose poems; I'll provide the war,"" undeniably similar to ""You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish"
"Alfred Hitchcock's ""Mr. and Mrs. Smith"" was a modest success and ""Suspicion"" a more substantial one, with an Oscar-winning turn by Joan Fontaine. That May, having granted twenty-five-year-old star and director Orson Welles virtually complete creative control over the film, RKO released ""Citizen Kane"". While it opened to strong reviews and would go on to be hailed as one of the greatest movies ever made, it lost money at the time and brought down the wrath of the Hearst newspaper chain on RKO. The next year saw the commercial failure of Welles's ""The Magnificent Ambersons""—like ""Kane"", critically lauded and overbudget—and"
"Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker's Journey Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey is a 2016 non-fiction book written by Harlan Lebo about the making of ""Citizen Kane,"" the motion picture produced, directed, co-written, and starring Orson Welles that is ranked by the American Film Institute as the best motion picture ever made. ""Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey"" describes Welles' rise to prominence, the creative control he received in his first Hollywood contract, studio infighting over the project at RKO Radio Pictures, the pressurized production schedule, the plot by the Hearst Corporation -- critical of the similarity between real-life publisher William Randolph Hearst"
"""Arena"" documentary ""The Complete Citizen Kane"". The colorization controversy was a factor in the passage of the National Film Preservation Act in 1988 which created the National Film Registry the following year. ABC News anchor Peter Jennings reported that ""one major reason for doing this is to require people like the broadcaster Ted Turner, who's been adding color to some movies and re-editing others for television, to put notices on those versions saying that the movies have been altered"". Database Other Citizen Kane Citizen Kane is a 1941 American mystery drama film by Orson Welles, its producer, co-screenwriter, director and"
"Thatcher. Kane has enough wealth to build Chicago's opera house, as well as his unfinished mansion, Xanadu. The mansion contains Kane's vast collection of classical sculptures and art, and the newsreel claims that portions of Xanadu were taken from other famous palaces overseas. Charles Foster Kane Charles Foster Kane is a fictional character and the subject of Orson Welles' 1941 film ""Citizen Kane"". The character is widely believed to be based on publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Welles played Kane (receiving an Oscar nomination), with Buddy Swan playing Kane as a child. Welles also produced, co-wrote and directed the film."
"""Citizen Kane"" (1941). At age four, Mankiewicz moved with his family to New York City, graduating in 1924 from Stuyvesant High School. Mankiewicz got work at the UFA film studio translating film intertitles from German to English. Comfortable in a variety of genres and able to elicit career performances from actors and actresses alike, Joseph L. Mankiewicz combined ironic, sophisticated scripts with a precise, sometimes stylized mise en scène. Mankiewicz worked for seventeen years as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures and as a producer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer before getting a chance to direct at Twentieth Century-Fox. Over six years he made"
"after the father-in-law of his mentor Roger Hill. Houseman claimed that Walter P. Thatcher was loosely based on J. P. Morgan, but only in the general sense of Morgan being an old-fashioned 19th century capitalist with ties to Wall Street finances and railroad companies. When Welles was 15 he became the ward of Dr. Maurice Bernstein. Bernstein is the last name of the only major character in ""Citizen Kane"" who receives a generally positive portrayal. Although Dr. Bernstein was nothing like the character in the film (possibly based on Solomon S. Carvalho, Hearst's business manager), Welles said, the use of"
"and he worked in movies and television throughout the 1950s. His final film, Welles's ""Touch of Evil"", in which he has a brief uncredited appearance, was released in May 1958, nearly a year after his death. Schilling died of a heart attack in his Hollywood apartment, four days short of his 49th birthday. Gus Schilling August ""Gus"" Schilling (June 20, 1908 — June 16, 1957) was an American film actor who started in burlesque comedy and usually played nervous comic roles, often unbilled. A friend of Orson Welles, he appeared in five of the director's films — ""Citizen Kane"" (first"
"Mankiewicz suffered a broken leg in a driving accident and had to be hospitalized. During his hospital stay, one of his visitors was Orson Welles, who met him earlier and had become a great admirer of his wit. During the months after his release from the hospital, he and Welles began working on story ideas which led to the creation of ""Citizen Kane"". Despite Welles' denial that the film was about Hearst, few people were convinced—including Hearst. After the release of ""Citizen Kane"", Hearst pursued a longtime vendetta against Mankiewicz and Welles for writing the story. ""Certain elements in the"
"The Battle Over Citizen Kane The Battle Over Citizen Kane is a 1996 documentary film about the clash between newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst and actor/writer/director Orson Welles over Welles's 1941 motion picture ""Citizen Kane"", which is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. ""The Battle Over Citizen Kane"" aired January 29, 1996, as an episode of the Public Broadcast System's ""The American Experience"" series. The documentary was narrated by Richard Ben Cramer, who co-wrote the program with Thomas Lennon. The rights to ""The Battle Over Citizen Kane"" were acquired by Scott Free productions in 1997"
"was a source of inspiration for the character. Some of the character's dialogue on how to run a newspaper are direct quotes from Welles's comments on how to make a motion picture (though this was his first). Mankiewicz included dialogue about Kane's voracious appetite, also meant to echo Welles's character. In recent years, Kane has been compared unfavorably to contemporary media figures such as Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner. ""Citizen Kane"" explores the life of the titular character, who is born of humble origins in the fictional settlement of Little Salem, Colorado, in 1862. A mine given to his parents—to"
"of the frame. Three feet from the lens, in the center of the foreground, was another face, and then, over a hundred yards away was the rear wall of the studio, showing telephone wires and architectural details. Everything was in focus, from three inches to infinity"". He died in his sleep, in Los Angeles, California on September 28, 1948 of coronary thrombosis at age 44. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. Some film historians believe ""Citizen Kane""'s visual brilliance was due primarily to the contributions of Toland, rather than director Orson Welles. However, many Welles"
"Citizen Kane trailer The ""Citizen Kane"" trailer was a four-minute, self-contained, ""making of"" promotional featurette by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, released in 1940 to promote the film ""Citizen Kane"". Unlike other standard theatrical trailers of the era, it did not feature a single second of footage of the actual film itself, but was a wholly original pseudo-documentary piece. It is considered by numerous film scholars such as Simon Callow, Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum to be a standalone short film, rather than a conventional ""trailer"", and to represent an important stage in the development of Welles's directorial style."
"in the trade press. RKO rejected Welles's first two movie proposals, but agreed on the third offer – ""Citizen Kane"". Welles co-wrote, produced and directed the film, and performed the lead role. Welles conceived the project with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who was writing radio plays for ""The Campbell Playhouse"". Mankiewicz based the original outline on the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate after being exiled from Hearst's circle. After agreeing on the storyline and character, Welles supplied Mankiewicz with 300 pages of notes and put him under contract to write the first"
"discoveries. Those discoveries leave Wisdom not only wanted dead or alive in five states, but also a modern-day folk hero."" In October 1985 David Begelman's Gladden Entertainment announced it had signed a deal with the 23 year old Estevez to write, produce and direct ""Wisdom"". Estevez had previously written ""That Was Then This is Now"". Begelman had been in charge of Columbia, and MGM, during which time he gave Walter Hill, Barry Levinson and Richard Benjamin their first directing jobs. Comparisons were made with Orson Welles who was 24 when he wrote, produced and directed ""Citizen Kane"". Estevez said ""if"
"a fictionalized biography of William Randolph Hearst, Orson Welles's film ""Citizen Kane"" is, in part, inspired by the life of Samuel Insull. ""It was a real man who built an opera house for the soprano of his choice, and much in the movie was borrowed from that story,"" Welles wrote. Welles gave Maurice Seiderman a photograph of Insull, with mustache, to use as a model for the makeup design of the old Charles Foster Kane. Welles denied that the character of Susan Alexander was based on Gladys Wallis, but co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz did incorporate a related experience into the"
"in pressuring theater chains to limit showings of ""Citizen Kane,"" resulting in only moderate box-office numbers and seriously harming Welles' career later on. The fight over the film was documented in the Academy Award nominated documentary, ""The Battle Over Citizen Kane"", and nearly sixty years later, HBO offered a fictionalized version of Hearst's efforts in its 1999 original production ""RKO 281"". Hearst is portrayed in the film by James Cromwell. ""Citizen Kane"" has twice been ranked No. 1 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (1998 and 2007). William Randolph Hearst William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14,"
"approximately half the size of the state of Rhode Island. While married to Millicent Hearst, he kept a mistress over twenty years his junior, the actress Marion Davies. Davies had been a silent film-era star, who worked on a number of talkies, but with less success. After the release of ""Citizen Kane"" to relatively positive critical reviews and largely indifferent popular response, Orson Welles moved on to his second project, ""The Magnificent Ambersons"". However, after ""Citizen Kane"" did not become a money-maker, ""The Magnificent Ambersons"" was wrested from his control; this time he did not have the right of final"
"Orson Welles,"" wrote Meryman, ""[and] as Pauline Kael put it, 'The members of the Academy ... probably felt good because their hearts had gone out to crazy, reckless Mank, their own resident loser-genius."" Richard Meryman concludes that ""taken as a whole ... ""Citizen Kane"" was overwhelmingly Welles's film, a triumph of intense personal magic. Herman was one of the talents, the crucial one, that were mined by Welles. But one marvels at the debt those two self-destroyers owe to each other. Without Welles there would have been no supreme moment for Herman. Without Mankiewicz there would have been no perfect"
"himself had worked with the concept. As a teenager in 1932 he wrote a play about the life of abolitionist John Brown called ""Marching Song"". Like that of ""Citizen Kane"", the play’s plot is structured around a journalist attempting to understand Brown by interviewing people who knew him and have different perspectives on him. The plot device of the unseen journalist Thompson in ""Citizen Kane"" is also reminiscent of the unseen Marlow in Welles's proposed film ""Heart of Darkness"", in which the narrator and audience share the point of view. ""Orson was from Chicago,"" said the Mercury Theatre's Richard Wilson,"
"Welles was unable to trim $50,000 from its budget. Schaefer told Welles that the $500,000 budget could not be exceeded; as war loomed, revenue was declining sharply in Europe by the fall of 1939. He then started work on the idea that became ""Citizen Kane"". Knowing the script would take time to prepare, Welles suggested to RKO that while that was being done—""so the year wouldn't be lost""—he make a humorous political thriller. Welles proposed ""The Smiler with a Knife"", from a novel by Cecil Day-Lewis. When that project stalled in December 1939, Welles began brainstorming other story ideas with"
"George Schaefer (film producer) George Schaefer (November 5, 1888, Brooklyn, New York – August 8, 1981) was a movie producer and the president of RKO in 1941 when Orson Welles made his classic film ""Citizen Kane"". Schaefer joined Paramount Pictures in 1920 and became general manager in 1933. He became vice president and chief executive officer at United Artists and was then hired as president of RKO in 1938. He was fired from RKO in 1942 because of the controversy surrounding Welles' second film ""The Magnificent Ambersons"" and due to RKO's lackluster box office receipts. Other films made by RKO"
"25, an aspiration fueled by Orson Welles's having directed ""Citizen Kane"" (1941) at that age. ""I had no pretensions that I was directing ""Citizen Kane"","" Friedel recalled, but he had long wanted to make a film, and had been living in Los Angeles trying to break into the film business. Friedel pitched his idea for a horror film to producer J.G. Patterson; at the time, Friedel was entirely inexperienced, having never been on a film set, never cast a film, nor worked in a film production. He credited Paterson as ""setting everything in motion"" in terms of getting the production"
"and then some.""Although ""The New York Times"" review said although the book seemed “quaint” when compared to the biography by Simon Callow on Orson Welles’ middle years that was published the same month, ""The Times"" also said that Lebo’s book was “The most thorough account yet of the genesis, production, and release of Welles's most famous film. . .it’s never been presented this comprehensively.” Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker's Journey Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey is a 2016 non-fiction book written by Harlan Lebo about the making of ""Citizen Kane,"" the motion picture produced, directed, co-written, and starring Orson Welles that"